Professor Gregory McNeal, JD/PhD, is an expert in law and public policy with a focus on security, technology and crime.
His current research projects include a book focused on the investigation and prosecution of national security crimes (under contract with Oxford University Press), a book about targeted killings (grant funded), and a book about the emergent civilian drone market. His law review articles have been published by or are forthcoming in The Georgetown Law Journal (winner of an article of the year award), The Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy, The Washington and Lee Law Review, and The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy among others. He is a co-author of the casebook Anti-Terrorism and Criminal Enforcement (with Norman Abrams, 4th Edition Supplement and 5th Edition), co-editor of Saddam On Trial: Understanding and Debating the Iraqi High Tribunal (with Michael Scharf) and is the editor of a forthcoming treatise Cybersecurity and Privacy.
He has testified before Congress about drones, surveillance, and counterterrorism and has also aided members of Congress and their committees in drafting legislation. Previously, he served as assistant director of the Institute for Global Security, served as an advisor to the Chief Prosecutor of the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions on matters related to the prosecution of suspected terrorists held in the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and co-directed a U.S. Department of Justice counterterrorism program. He has consulted with the Department of Defense on a range of issues, including helping to draft a manual aimed at reducing harm to civilians in conflict, and advising on matters related to cybersecurity.
Dr. McNeal has also advised Fortune 500 companies and the defense industry on matters related to drones, privacy, surveillance, and homeland security. Before becoming an attorney he served as an officer in the United States Army. His popular writing has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Times, and The Baltimore Sun, and he has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN, NPR, NBC Nightly News, BBC, C-SPAN, and other national media outlets as an expert commentator on security, technology and crime. As a Forbes contributor he writes about law and public policy and is one of the nation’s top law professor bloggers based on the Law Prof Blog Traffic Rankings. You can follow him on Twitter @GregoryMcNeal and on Facebook at GregorySMcNeal.

Six Things You Should Know About Amazon's Drones

Amazon has asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for an exemption from rules prohibiting the use of drones for commercial purposes. With this request, the company has signaled that they are serious about transitioning the idea of thirty minute Prime Air deliveries from concept to reality.

Current FAA rules restrict commercial use of drones, and Amazon is seeking an exemption from those rules so the company can conduct additional research and development of their Prime Air concept. The company claims to have made rapid developments in its Prime Air program by testing their drones inside their research and development lab in Seattle. Now, the shopping giant wants the ability to safely innovate and to do, in their words “what thousands of hobbyists and manufacturers of model aircraft do every day.”

Amazon wants the FAA to allow them to start testing their Prime Air drones, which the company hopes will be ready by 2015 to deliver products to customers.

Here are six things you need to know about Amazon’s request to fly drones:

Amazon wants to operate what they refer to as their “own private model airplane field, but with additional safeguards that go far beyond those that FAA has long‐held provide a sufficient level of safety for public model airplane fields.” Amazon’s operations, if allowed, will be conducted in a confined area over isolated Amazon private property. The company plans to locate their private air field a sufficient distance away from any airport, heliport, seaplane base, spaceport or other location with aviation activities. They plan to do so away from densely populated areas and any military or U.S. government installations or airfields.

Not surprisingly, the company plans to impose strict security controls on access to their test facility. Testing operations at the private airfield will occur only in the presence of Amazon employees, contract personnel, and invitees. The company plans to implement security measures to deter unauthorized access.

2. Amazon claims their drone technology has advanced significantly in just five months.Demonstrating how innovation can occur rapidly when a company has the will and resources to experiment, Amazon claims to have rapidly prototyped their systems using indoor research labs in Seattle. The company has quickly developed highly-automated aerial vehicles with advanced capabilities and claims to be on the ninth generation of their drone.

The company has tested the full spectrum of their drone’s capabilities including agility, flight duration and redundancy. They also claim to have developed sense-and-avoid sensors and algorithms that will allow the Prime Air drones to see obstacles and automatically avoid collisions. The battery powered drones are a rotor based system capable of flying at 50mph, and can carry a five pound payload — which is sufficient to deliver 86% of the products in Amazon’s inventory.

3. Amazon wants to innovate and knows that it can’t under the FAA’s burdensome regulatory regime.The company has conducted rapid prototyping indoors (where the FAA does not control the airspace), but now they want to transition to testing outdoors. Doing so will allow them to evaluate how the drones will operate in more realistic, non-lab like conditions. However, once the company moves outside they will be subjected to the FAA’s burdensome regulations which stifle innovation.

The FAA currently requires all test aircraft to fly only at FAA test-sites, and to seek special “airworthiness certificates.” Certificates generally go to aircraft that have already gone through a lengthy period of R&D — but Amazon wants an exemption so that they can conduct R&D and prototyping. The company says that it would be impractical for them to only fly at FAA test-sites or apply for a special “airworthiness certificate” for each of the drones they are evaluating.

Amazon compares their drones to model aircraft, which makes sense because manned aircraft are simply impractical for the type of delivery operations the company wants to test and eventually implement. Amazon seeks to operate their drones (on their private airfield) within the visual line of sight of the operator and/or one or more observers, at less than 400 feet above ground level, and within Class G airspace.

Amazon plans to implement procedures to ensure that drone operators and observers are not distracted while flying their drones. The operator will be considered a “pilot in command” and will have responsibility for the operation of the drone and will hold a private pilot certificate or will have completed FAA private pilot ground instruction and passed the FAA private pilot written examination. The company plans to only use operators who have “completed training on the normal, abnormal, and emergency procedures in specific details and demonstrated proficiency with the sUAS being operated.” Operators and observers will be in constant contact and if contact is broken between them, or if either individual spots a safety risk, the operator will immediately conclude the flight.

The company is embracing technology to ensure operations are safe. Rather than merely relying on the skill of a pilot to ensure that the drone stays within the test site, the company will instead use geofencing to keep the drone below 400 feet above ground level and within the boundaries of the test facility. Geofencing is a feature in a software program that uses GPS or radio frequency triangulation to define geographical boundaries, effectively drawing a virtual barrier within which a drone can be confined. This feature is one that is already available on many commercial drones. As an example the DJI Phantom’s newest firmware update (see video below) includes safety software that automatically prevents the drone from flying near an airport.

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Airspace regulation is heavy for a reason. Private pilots have to follow the rules, so do the airlines, and so does Amazon. As long as they stay below 400 and away from airports, they’re really operating within the rules of model aircraft and not much of a safety risk. I’m not sure they need an exemption in this case, except as being a commercial enterprise operating the flights.

7) Amazon is currently being sued for targeting kids for in-app purchases and changing the TOS so as to make the parental controls and passwords effectively useless in preventing kids from running up millions of dollars in illegal debts. Ans the FAA should trust them with drones????? Gimme a break.

8) Amazon has never turned a dime in true profit and has no prospects of ever turning a dime in profit, especially as interest rates on their monster debt begin to rise. Bezos’ business model is “We lose money on every item we sell, but we will make up for it by volume and drone delivery.” Investors in Amazon are forced to pony up addition al funds every month to service the debt. If they don’t pony up, they face the prospect of Amazon’s house of cards collapsing to penny stock levels.

9) This is so impractical as to be only a low-level publicity stunt. And the author fell for it! You will not see drone delivery in your lifetime.

That said, Amazon drones would make great target practice. Kinda like the poor man’s skeet. LOL

Gregory McNeal has been snookered here good. It matters not if Amazon is making progress on “technical issues.” There are limitations that will stop this cold. To move a five pound package at 50 MPH would take a huge battery that might last 15 minutes. The drone would be huge as you run into laws of diminishing return. The bigger the battery the more weight, and the more weight you need yet an every bigger battery. I don’t know why this Amazon Drone thing keeps coming up in the news. Remember the Segway? Amazon was going to sell millions of them and we were all going to be going all over the place with them. While they are still sold the dream did not mesh with reality. Same with the drones. There will be good uses for a drone. Survey purposes, news reporting, etc. But there will not in the next few decades be drones filling the sky delivering packages to our doorsteps. There are already economical, efficient, and proven ways to move goods in a cost effective way. The Amazon Drone brings nothing to the table that cannot already be done in a better way.

I think drones have a big place in delivery, farming, travel videos, search and rescue. Also, insurance companies which pay out on natural disasters such as flooding are looking to use drones to survey the areas affected. So I think there is plenty of good areas where these drones can be used.